A guess, not a certain argument from clear evidence. The common wisdom about lockdowns is that the laptop class protected itself at the expense of the people who kept driving trucks and stocking shelves in the dangerous world to support their withdrawal.
I never quite thought of it from that perspective. As a retired person the pandemic lockdowns didn't impact my income or my working situation, obviously. I did, however, rail at the lockdowns and took every opportunity I could find to get out and defy what the ruling class was telling me to do. Maybe it was the rebel in me, or maybe it was just the common sense of having been around for six plus decades. And throughout all of that, I didn't get a case of COVID until visting friends actually brought it into my house. Oh the irony.
Mar 24, 2023·edited Mar 24, 2023Liked by Chris Bray
Great follow up on your “politics of debilitation” piece.
What I see is this: Much of the laptop class overlaps with the woke pro-censorship “Speech is violence!” class. These latter, now millions of them, are people whose cultural politics is built upon the notion that certain identity groups (POC, LGBTQ+) are so utterly fragile that not only can one not criticize them, but one must constantly agree with their every claim or one approaches an act of “violence”, “erasure”, etc. And the key point for these woke laptop folks is that their *own* identity and status in society are based on holding firm to this woke philosophy of maintaining “verbal safety”. So that nothing is more anathema or inspires more horror in them than people who break their verbal codes—especially people who may feasibly throw around racial slurs or deny this or that Rainbow Article of Faith. Such people are the dirty Other who must be excluded to maintain “safety”.
Now look what happened with Covid. Suddenly we had an actual physical virus, not a verbal virus. But the very same economy of virtue-signaling safetyism arose in response. It arose among these laptop liberals all the more virulently because they noticed that the people most skeptical of official Covidism were largely the same people who’d long been skeptical of “speech codes” and “trigger warnings”. The same dirty Other, now eager to kill grandma to boot. With the result that the two kinds of safetyism melded into one: their mental approach to the Covid virus became *the same thing* as their mental approach to the “white-supremacist”, “free speech” verbal virus. The two kinds of pathogen, medical and verbal, came to occupy the same regions of their brain.
Of course we know that most Americans who support robust free speech are not a threat to POC or anyone else: they are not dangerous “white supremacists”. And we know Covid is no longer a threat. But the problem for our woke laptoppers is obvious: their very identity and status depend on maintaining the illusion of threat. If there is no real threat from that dirty Other—white, Trumpist, brazenly unmasked in line at the supermarket—their whole social being begins to crumble.
And so they’d rather willfully debilitate themselves than return to breathing oxygen in unmasked public places. Because to go unmasked in public is to admit that verbal slurs against trans people are OK. It’s to admit that white supremacy is OK. In their minds, all these threats are *the same thing*, and to give up any one of them is to risk the whole neurotic projection collapsing.
FYI, Chris. Response to your piece a few days back:
as someone who was forced into the laptop class after being depersoned and driven indoors by andrew cuomo in 2020, i can tell you that the "prolonged habit of fearful behavior, joylessness and sustained isolation, purposelessness, family disconnection, and so on" started years ago with the advent of the laptop class itself. kinda like the "warm base" that the DOD and pharma talk about in tabletop exercises and white papers. very useful in creating a baseline of hysteria on social media, and easier to kill off since their immune systems were already pretty wobbly by the time this shit went down
People couldn't wait to go home and stay there. It's like they never wanted to leave home in the first place. I'm mostly speaking of my co-workers here in Vermont. We had a 1,000 person office in 2019. Now only about 20 people "come in" to work, and I have to explain on every Team Call that yes, I'm in the ACTUAL OFFICE, and "Why?!?!" Because I don't want to work at home. "Oh, you're one of those OFFICE PEOPLE," said with the same tone people used to use with "vegetarians." Great. I'm now a weirdo who likes to wear real clothes and leave the house to talk to other humans in person, OMG!
There's so much to write about the total craziness of our "elites", who are trying to destroy the next generation as well as themselves, but you really nailed this Chris. Things nobody is saying, but normal people are starting to notice. Thanks for thinking this through and sharing it with us.
It was painful to wake up to the genocide, but now I can't imagine how the cretins don't see it. Denial reinforced with propaganda. Great essay, Chris.
Good explanation for why society seems to be losing it's mind. Everyone getting covid seems to have revealed it was all for nothing but the truth is these people liked the restrictions and it allowed them to virtue signal their self righteousness. In their minds it wasn't truckers and farmers and delivery people that got them through the pandemic, it was them and the rules they followed.
“chronic suicide” -- K Vonnegut used to say he was “committing suicide by cigarette.” The point being that we habituate ourselves to industrial life by addiction to incremental poisons, dispensed in shrink-wrapped government-approved corporate doses
Chronic suicide - I’m going to be thinking about that. It is so bizarre that people increasingly slip themselves into an ascetic and sanitized life and feel virtuous about it. Even art is becoming more and more ugly. Young people seem miserable. If you’re not miserable, there must be something wrong with you - call the gender butchers! Or the social justice warriors to give you a cause to stress about! *sigh*
"Atrophy" is a very apt concept with which to describe the laptop class, and not only as regards their musculature and immune systems. Their social skills, their discernment, their ability to perceive reality, their memories ... everything about them is degenerating.
Life requires hormesis, a degree of resistance and challenge. Without this it withers. Too much "safety" and life withers.
Perhaps their spirits intuit this, that the lives they are trapped in are deeply toxic. Seeing no way out, they elect for slow suicide. Having a degree of influence in society, they project this death wish outward - hence the enthusiasm for the sterilization of children, abortion, euthanasia, safe injection sites, and all the rest. They don't just wish to end their own lives, but to end it all. They rarely admit this, but if you corner them you can frequently get them to admit that they believe the world would be better off without humans.
Working every day in a full service medical office (adult, pediatrics, dental, and mental health services) as a provider I can tell you that you are 100% right on this- our mental health population has exploded- in all age groups. I suspect the next issue will be mental health worker burn-out. What a disaster was created.
Like so many things, almost all of this springs from the well of the Feminization of Western Culture. The twitter photo is a perfect example of this (problem glasses, dyed hair, bizarre narrative). Yes, there are men like this too (feminized or gay), but the majority of this comes from women's need for "safety" and drama. The perfect match.
The most frequent command in the Bible is do not be afraid.
I never quite thought of it from that perspective. As a retired person the pandemic lockdowns didn't impact my income or my working situation, obviously. I did, however, rail at the lockdowns and took every opportunity I could find to get out and defy what the ruling class was telling me to do. Maybe it was the rebel in me, or maybe it was just the common sense of having been around for six plus decades. And throughout all of that, I didn't get a case of COVID until visting friends actually brought it into my house. Oh the irony.
Great follow up on your “politics of debilitation” piece.
What I see is this: Much of the laptop class overlaps with the woke pro-censorship “Speech is violence!” class. These latter, now millions of them, are people whose cultural politics is built upon the notion that certain identity groups (POC, LGBTQ+) are so utterly fragile that not only can one not criticize them, but one must constantly agree with their every claim or one approaches an act of “violence”, “erasure”, etc. And the key point for these woke laptop folks is that their *own* identity and status in society are based on holding firm to this woke philosophy of maintaining “verbal safety”. So that nothing is more anathema or inspires more horror in them than people who break their verbal codes—especially people who may feasibly throw around racial slurs or deny this or that Rainbow Article of Faith. Such people are the dirty Other who must be excluded to maintain “safety”.
Now look what happened with Covid. Suddenly we had an actual physical virus, not a verbal virus. But the very same economy of virtue-signaling safetyism arose in response. It arose among these laptop liberals all the more virulently because they noticed that the people most skeptical of official Covidism were largely the same people who’d long been skeptical of “speech codes” and “trigger warnings”. The same dirty Other, now eager to kill grandma to boot. With the result that the two kinds of safetyism melded into one: their mental approach to the Covid virus became *the same thing* as their mental approach to the “white-supremacist”, “free speech” verbal virus. The two kinds of pathogen, medical and verbal, came to occupy the same regions of their brain.
Of course we know that most Americans who support robust free speech are not a threat to POC or anyone else: they are not dangerous “white supremacists”. And we know Covid is no longer a threat. But the problem for our woke laptoppers is obvious: their very identity and status depend on maintaining the illusion of threat. If there is no real threat from that dirty Other—white, Trumpist, brazenly unmasked in line at the supermarket—their whole social being begins to crumble.
And so they’d rather willfully debilitate themselves than return to breathing oxygen in unmasked public places. Because to go unmasked in public is to admit that verbal slurs against trans people are OK. It’s to admit that white supremacy is OK. In their minds, all these threats are *the same thing*, and to give up any one of them is to risk the whole neurotic projection collapsing.
FYI, Chris. Response to your piece a few days back:
https://claytestament.blogspot.com/2023/03/entrenched-clown-syndrome-real-pandemic_23.html
2 Timothy 1:7
New King James Version
7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
The Eloi disappeared to their underground bunkers and binge-watched TV and snarked on twitter while the Morlocks did all the work.
One day the Morlocks will notice this.
as someone who was forced into the laptop class after being depersoned and driven indoors by andrew cuomo in 2020, i can tell you that the "prolonged habit of fearful behavior, joylessness and sustained isolation, purposelessness, family disconnection, and so on" started years ago with the advent of the laptop class itself. kinda like the "warm base" that the DOD and pharma talk about in tabletop exercises and white papers. very useful in creating a baseline of hysteria on social media, and easier to kill off since their immune systems were already pretty wobbly by the time this shit went down
People couldn't wait to go home and stay there. It's like they never wanted to leave home in the first place. I'm mostly speaking of my co-workers here in Vermont. We had a 1,000 person office in 2019. Now only about 20 people "come in" to work, and I have to explain on every Team Call that yes, I'm in the ACTUAL OFFICE, and "Why?!?!" Because I don't want to work at home. "Oh, you're one of those OFFICE PEOPLE," said with the same tone people used to use with "vegetarians." Great. I'm now a weirdo who likes to wear real clothes and leave the house to talk to other humans in person, OMG!
There's so much to write about the total craziness of our "elites", who are trying to destroy the next generation as well as themselves, but you really nailed this Chris. Things nobody is saying, but normal people are starting to notice. Thanks for thinking this through and sharing it with us.
It was painful to wake up to the genocide, but now I can't imagine how the cretins don't see it. Denial reinforced with propaganda. Great essay, Chris.
And, of course, these unintelligentsia are quite literally committing suicide, jab by jab, with their endless parade of DEATHVAX™ injections.
Good explanation for why society seems to be losing it's mind. Everyone getting covid seems to have revealed it was all for nothing but the truth is these people liked the restrictions and it allowed them to virtue signal their self righteousness. In their minds it wasn't truckers and farmers and delivery people that got them through the pandemic, it was them and the rules they followed.
“chronic suicide” -- K Vonnegut used to say he was “committing suicide by cigarette.” The point being that we habituate ourselves to industrial life by addiction to incremental poisons, dispensed in shrink-wrapped government-approved corporate doses
Chronic suicide - I’m going to be thinking about that. It is so bizarre that people increasingly slip themselves into an ascetic and sanitized life and feel virtuous about it. Even art is becoming more and more ugly. Young people seem miserable. If you’re not miserable, there must be something wrong with you - call the gender butchers! Or the social justice warriors to give you a cause to stress about! *sigh*
"Atrophy" is a very apt concept with which to describe the laptop class, and not only as regards their musculature and immune systems. Their social skills, their discernment, their ability to perceive reality, their memories ... everything about them is degenerating.
Life requires hormesis, a degree of resistance and challenge. Without this it withers. Too much "safety" and life withers.
Perhaps their spirits intuit this, that the lives they are trapped in are deeply toxic. Seeing no way out, they elect for slow suicide. Having a degree of influence in society, they project this death wish outward - hence the enthusiasm for the sterilization of children, abortion, euthanasia, safe injection sites, and all the rest. They don't just wish to end their own lives, but to end it all. They rarely admit this, but if you corner them you can frequently get them to admit that they believe the world would be better off without humans.
Working every day in a full service medical office (adult, pediatrics, dental, and mental health services) as a provider I can tell you that you are 100% right on this- our mental health population has exploded- in all age groups. I suspect the next issue will be mental health worker burn-out. What a disaster was created.
Like so many things, almost all of this springs from the well of the Feminization of Western Culture. The twitter photo is a perfect example of this (problem glasses, dyed hair, bizarre narrative). Yes, there are men like this too (feminized or gay), but the majority of this comes from women's need for "safety" and drama. The perfect match.